Floating above a mire of meh jukebox musicals, Tod Kimbro’s The Swamp Is on Fire is an airboat of originality at Fringe, with a fresh score filled with the soulful Southern-styled glam rock Orlandoans have missed since Kimbro’s move to the Pacific Northwest. In a departure for the veteran writer, this scripted pseudo-autobiographical one-man show incorporates elements of his own life growing up gay in rural Florida with a fictional story about the lingering impact of unrequited love.
Kimbro plays Mathew Mark Matheson, a square peg student stuck in the round hole of a fundamentalist Christian high school, as well as his best buddy, Silas, and Silas’s scary sibling, Thaddeus. Jumping between 1987 and 2009, the script gradually pieces together the story of an unfortunate prank and an unexpected hookup, and their decade-spanning consequences.
An early song about a first crush on a classmate shows off Kimbro’s killer pipes and keyboard technique, as well as his talent for telegraphing emotion through his expressive eyes. The salacious Torah story about Sodom and Gomorrah inspires the “least spiritual spiritual” you’ve ever heard, and “Holy Ghosts” is a banger of a lovelorn torch song that ranks with Wasteland’s “Pushover” as one of the best ballads Kimbro has ever written. Uptempo numbers are enhanced by Blue Estrella’s flash-and-trash lighting, which transforms the tiny Savoy stage into a rock arena.
This is an intimate story of small-scale personal tragedy, but under the direction of co-arranger Jeff Forte, Kimbro tackles it with the intensity of an earthshaking epic. Some songs are segmented by narration that doesn’t allow them to develop into a satisfying climax, and backing tracks occasionally overwhelm his monologue. But even an imperfect production by Kimbro’s sky-high standards far exceeds the general standard found at Fringe. I’m very happy for Kimbro that he moved to a place that isn’t trying to kill him on a daily basis, but this show is just a reminder of how badly we miss having him in our flaming quagmire of a city.
The Swamp Is on Fire
Starlite Room, Savoy Orlando
60 minutes; 18 & up
$15
Get tickets
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This article appears in May 14-20, 2025.